The Pool of Memories
09.04 - 29.05 2022
Surrey Art Gallery, Surrey, British Columbia, Canada
Immersive Interactive Project | Solo Exhibition
Curated by Suvi Bains
The immersive interactive work invites you to immerse yourself inside a water tank. Visitors spend time in The Pool of Memories to reflect on water. Just like bodies of water exists in various breadths & depths, so do our stories & memories about water. Kaur asks visitors of all ages to participate in what she calls "intergenerational collective consciousness, where one is invited to respond with writing or drawing to the questions below.
What is your relationship with water?
How does water remind you of home?
What memories and stories do you share with water?
These notes, letters, poems, & drawings become a metaphor for storytelling, knowledge-sharing, & memory (re)making. The tank is the vessel for immersion of collective memories that contribute to a larger web of diverse stories that fluidly intertwine with each other. These soaked & submerged letters in water embody our emotions of nostalgia, love, care, happiness, distress, healing & much more, that we/you have encountered with water in time. Water being alive with its capacity to absorb & retain will keep these soaked and submerged stories and memories alive."
The Pool of Memories confronts the viewer to reflect upon the human care that goes into preserving water in our current climate. From scarcity of water, rapidly disrupting weather patterns, contaminated water supplies, food security, & more, we are forced to re-evaluate our access to water.
Text by Suvi Bains
Pic Credits: Dennis Ha and Zoe Yang